


Radiation+Mutations

by JustAnotherWriter (N1ghtshade)



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-2.17 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-07 02:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15899130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1ghtshade/pseuds/JustAnotherWriter
Summary: It starts as a fever.The medical staff said none of the team had been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation in Chernobyl. What happens to Mac after that mission says differently."I told you there was a good kind, man!" Jack grins."Jack, I still don't think this qualifies as the good kind."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KatieComma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatieComma/gifts), [Bumblebees_Guardian_FF](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bumblebees_Guardian_FF/gifts).



> Thanks to KatieComma and Bumblebees_Guardian_FF for this prompt, and KatieComma for being an awesome Beta reader!

It starts as a fever. 

A little less than a week after they get back from Chernobyl, Mac shows up to the War Room tired and red-faced, wiping sweat off his forehead when he sits down. He huddles into one of the chairs, barely moving. That in itself is so unlike the normally energetic, golden-retriever-puppy-with-a-sugar-rush Mac it pulls Riley’s attention away from the briefing she’s preparing on her laptop.

“Hey buddy, you okay?” Jack asks.

“Yeah. Who turned the heat so far up?” Mac mutters, shifting like he can’t get comfortable. Sweat stains spread across the chest and neck of his shirt.

“Bud, the heat ain’t even on.” 

Matty walks over and lays the back of her hand against Mac’s forehead. The expression on her face means nothing good. Neither does the fact that when he tries to stand up, he collapses back into the chair, eyes closed, breathing ragged. When Matty calls for a medical team to the War Room, Riley feels a strange ringing in her ears and thinks she might be the next one to pass out.  _ This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. _ All of them were cleared at exfil. After decontamination, they’d all registered at safe exposure levels. Mac can’t be sick. He can’t be.

* * *

Riley wants to be with Mac, but the medical staff is insisting she stay put in the normal infirmary for a full work-up, in case whatever this is has affected her as well. She hears the words, “mutated” and “superbug” thrown around. But she’s far more worried for Mac than for herself. After all, he’s the one who’s actually sick.

She sits on the edge of the cot, swinging her legs over the edge and kicking like she used to when she was a kid. She glances at the tongue depressors and then looks away. It reminds her too much of Mac, and how he distracted her when she had to get her broken arm reset after Myanmar by drawing faces on the sticks, giving them funny voices to make her laugh. 

She can’t even see him, he’s in an isolation room until they find out what’s wrong. 

It feels like it takes forever for the doctors to come draw blood. Even longer to get results. Riley  _ knows _ Phoenix tech is the fastest there is, that they’ll get her blood work back as soon as humanly possible, but Mac is in there alone, without his family, and she needs to see him.

And if she’s worried, she can’t imagine how Jack must feel. He’s sitting on the cot in the next cubicle over, she can see his shadow on the curtain. She hasn’t tried to talk to him, afraid if she does the rage and fear she knows he’s holding will spill over onto her, no matter how much he won’t mean it. She knows it was the other way around at that warehouse, when she was undercover and Jack nearly punched Mac. She’d prefer not to start something like that now. They have enough problems.

When the results come back, it’s what Riley should want to hear. “You and Dalton are clean.”

“What about Mac?” Jack asks. Riley finally joined him, because she couldn’t stand worrying alone, and he hadn’t been upset at all. He’d just pulled her into a hug, letting her rest her head on his shoulder. It feels better than Riley would ever admit. 

“We can’t figure out what’s wrong. It’s not a virus. Or a bacterial infection. Nothing shows up on the scans, but his fever’s risen by .2 degrees since we’ve admitted him.” 

“What about radiation poisoning?” Jack’s just raised Riley’s worst fear. Ever since she was a kid and her class watched a documentary on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, she’s had nightmares about dying that way. Something no one can cure, killing slowly and painfully. But right now, she realizes her worst nightmare isn’t herself dying this way. It’s watching it happen to the closest thing she has to a brother.

“If it is radiation poisoning, the symptoms should have had a more rapid onset. Fever is one of the first symptoms to appear, usually just a few hours after exposure.” The clinical response doesn’t do much to alleviate Riley’s concern. “But we can’t rule it out. He’s not telling us anything about any other symptoms, so we’re struggling to get a good idea of what’s wrong.”

“I’ll go talk to him.” Riley couldn’t bear it if Mac’s own stubborn hatred of medical settings is what gets him killed.

“He’s still in isolation…” The doctor’s voice trails off.

“I’ve been exactly where he’s been; if I’m gonna get sick there’s nothing keeping us apart is going to do about it.” Riley walks a little shakily to the isolation units and keys in the door code for the one Mac is in.

_ He looks awful _ . Hair soaked with sweat and matted to his forehead, tossing restlessly, with even the thin sheet from the bed shoved to the foot of it. His hands are shaking, his normally bright, alert eyes are glassy and unfocused, and he’s so warm Riley can feel the heat coming off him when she sits down in the bedside chair.

Still, she tries to play it upbeat, because if it was  _ her  _ here, that’s what Mac would do. He’d try to make her comfortable. “What do you think you’re doing? You’re hot enough as it is, no need to go running a fever on us.”

He laughs, a bit weakly but Riley can tell it’s genuine. “That was awful, Riles. I’d say they should treat you for bad joke disease, but there’s no cure for that. Jack’s living proof.”

“Where do you think I learned it from?” She smiles. 

Mac tries to laugh again, but then he shudders, and Riley sees his hands clench into white-knuckled fists. “Mac, what’s wrong?”

“Headache, it’s not that bad.”

“Mac, how long have you been feeling like this?”

“I don’t know. I thought I was just sick from the plane turbulence, because the dizziness mostly went away.”

“You felt sick right after Chernobyl?” Riley’s stomach sinks.  _ Maybe this is radiation poisoning after all. _

“Not awful. I only threw up when we hit that storm over the ocean, and pretty much everyone else was just as sick at that point anyway.” Riley doesn’t remember that, she was too busy wishing she’d skipped eating everything she’d had in the past three days. 

When she tells the doctor, he reminds her they’ve already screened Mac once for radiation, but promises they’ll try again. “Could have been faulty equipment at exfil. Which means you two need to be tested as well.”

Riley swallows down the fear threatening to choke her. Ever since that first day with the team, when she watched him chase down, and stop, a jet, Riley’s been both terrified for Mac’s life and confident that no matter what the problem is, he can find a way to solve it. 

But watching him lying there shaking and sweating in a hospital bed, Riley’s more afraid than she’s been in a long time. This is worse than when Murdoc had him, or when he went undercover in prison. This time, Mac can’t even save himself. 

* * *

The doctors want her and Jack to leave, but they can’t. They take it in shifts, one person staying up to watch over Mac while the other sleeps. Now is Riley’s turn, and she’s only up for half an hour before he starts seizing, body temperature so high it’s literally frying his brain. Jack wakes up as the monitors start screaming, and he holds her tight while the doctors work.

Riley watches Mac, nearly submerged in a tub of icy water, shivering like he's going to shake himself apart, but his temperature refuses to go down even a fraction of a degree. If he even survives, how much will be left of the Mac they know? She doesn’t want to think that way, and no matter what, he’s family and they’re never going to let him go, but if he retains enough of himself to know what he lost, he’ll be crushed. It’s hard to imagine a Mac who isn’t a know-it-all, fix-anything, do-physics-and-chemistry-in-his-head-in-a-moving-van Mac. 

The doctors tell her not to hold his hand, because he can’t control the muscle spasms and he could break her fingers. So she runs her fingers over the back of his hand, willing the touch to ground him to the real world, to connect him to his family. But it doesn’t seem to help, because every hour he gets worse. He’s gone from delirious, calling for his mother and grandfather and Jack and his team, and screaming for his old CO Pena to get out of a house, to catatonic. He’s barely moving now, 

This isn't how it's supposed to be. They're supposed to save the world together. He isn't supposed to die.

And then everything changes again. From motionless, barely catching a shallow breath, Mac suddenly shoves himself half upright, shaking and scrabbling frantically at his own skin. His blunt fingernails tear the thin hospital gown and leave red welts on his chest. Mac screams hoarsely, clawing at his chest like there’s something trapped there he’s trying to get out. His back arches, his scream cutting off sharply. 

It feels like the temperature in the room has risen fifty degrees. Riley’s not sure if it’s her own panic or something else. She’s sleep-deprived and crying, so her vision is too blurry for her to know if the faint red glow surrounding Mac is real or only something her mind’s inventing.

She’s seen Mac bring a guy back from the dead with something he whipped up from some vials in an ambulance, and another time he used pieces of a classic car to restart a man’s heart, but now, he’s the one who needs help, and no one else can do what he does.

She shoves past Jack and runs. She can’t watch this. She can’t watch Mac fight for his life and lose.

She races past the War Room, ignoring Matty calling after her, and shoves the doors open. Riley runs until she can’t run any farther, and then she falls to the ground and sobs. She knows she shouldn’t be lying on the ground like this, Jack would yell at her for ignoring her situational awareness training, but  _ Mac is dying and I don’t care what happens to me. _

She rolls over and stares at the cloudless sky and screams, “Why him? What did he do to deserve this?” And then, more quietly, “Please don’t take him away from us. Please. Please give him back.”

Her phone buzzes in her pocket, and she pulls it out. It’s a text from Matty. 

“Mac awake. Looking for you. Get your a$$ back to Phoenix now.” She flings her phone down, jumps to her feet, and leaps up and down, screeching so loudly the birds in three trees panic and wheel into the air.

* * *

Riley pushes open the door to the isolation room. Matty shakes her head at her but smiles. “Mac?” He’s awake and aware, sitting up in the bed. His hair’s still sweaty, he’s still too pale, but he’s not currently dying.

She wishes she’d remembered to bring the glass of water she’d filled in the waiting room...oh wait, she did. She could swear she left it on the table out there, but it’s in her hand.  _ Wow, I need to go home and sleep for thirty-six hours straight. I’m starting to go crazy. _

“Hi, Riles.” He says quietly, voice hoarse from the screaming earlier.

Jack stands up and pulls Riley into a huge hug, spilling half the water onto their shirts. “He’s gonna be okay. He’s okay.” She starts to cry again.

“His fever broke about ten minutes after you left,” Matty says softly. “And it’s too early to tell, but they’re saying he doesn’t appear to have any lasting brain damage. No one knows why. His fever was spiking at 113.7.” 

“People have survived worse,” Mac mutters softly. “Guy in 1980 lived and his was 115.” Riley resists the urge to laugh at Mac’s random knowledge.  _ Yeah, he’s gonna be okay.  _

“I don’t know what happened.” He takes the glass from her and takes a small sip. “I...it felt like a normal fever for a while, and then...I wanted to tell them to stop trying to make it go away. It felt...like it was supposed to be there. Every time they tried to cool me down, it...it felt like  _ that _ was going to kill me.” 

Riley rests her hand on his, gently. His skin is still warm, almost hotter than is comfortable to touch. She blinks, and then tells herself she really, really needs sleep, because she thought she saw that crimson glow again, hovering over his hands and chest. 

_ He’s fine. He’ll be okay. It’s just one of those weird virus things they’ll never really figure out. _ She blinks again and the light is gone. It’s just Mac, smiling sleepily at her.

“It’s okay, Riley. I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

Mac quickly gets frustrated with the medical staff, because after the initial break in his fever, his temperature refuses to return to normal and they won’t let him leave. Riley can’t help but be amused by the way he whines for her to help him break out every time she comes to see him. Jack and Bozer say it’s the same with them. Riley hasn’t noticed Mac try it on Matty, though. Maybe he knows better.

For three days he’s still running a fever of 102, and despite that fact, he insists he’s fine and actually gets up and tries to leave until a nurse calls Matty and she orders him back to his room with threats of paperwork. 

It’s not until a week and a half later that he’s actually cleared to leave the infirmary. His temperature continues to hover between a degree and a degree and a half higher than normal, but the doctors are fairly sure they can finally let him leave. If they don't, he'll probably just bolt the second he's left unattended, and they have better things to do than babysit one agent.

He doesn’t seem any the worse for wear for the incident. The same Mac the team has missed is back, teasing Riley and sassing Jack and making stuff with Bozer and purposefully disobeying Matty and leaving his feet on the table.

Riley begins to forget the strange things about the fever altogether. She dismisses the glow as her overactive imagination, the unbelievably high fever as exactly what the doctors were saying, a mutated superbug that had been dormant in the abandoned Chernobyl city. Life goes on.

* * *

Their next mission is in Sarajevo, taking down a small group of disorganized terrorists who’ve managed to get their hands on some Soviet-era weaponry. It’s supposed to be an in-and-out job, get the guns, hack their system, get out.

Except that their contact sold them out, and the second Mac gets Jack, Riley, and himself through the dilapidated elevator shaft and into the building, they’re face to face with at least twenty of the terrorists, all armed to the teeth.

_ We’re all going to die _ . That's Riley's one thought as the men level their guns. And then the room shakes, the air feels like it's on fire, and a concussive blast like a bomb going off flings Riley backward, into the elevator they just came out of. She feels her shoulder connect painfully with the wall. Someone is screaming.  _ Is that me?  _

She sits up slowly. The whole building is on fire in various places, even some of the metal beams are burning. Beside her, Jack groans. 

“What the hell?” He mutters, sitting up. “Did they blow up their own supply building with them still inside?”

Riley’s beginning to say she wouldn’t put it past this organization’s record for botched planning, when she realizes who’s not with them. “Mac! Mac!”

She and Jack are bruised, singed, and sooty, and both of them are sporting several bleeding scratches from debris, but they're alive. But Mac is nowhere to be seen. She steps out of the elevator, Jack behind her, her right shoulder screaming in pain. 

There’s a scorched smell like the air after a lightning strike or near a welding arc. Riley doesn’t remember any bomb smelling like this.  _ What kind of life is this where I’m familiar enough with the smell of explosives to know what I’m dealing with? _ She takes a quick glance around the room, which seems ringed in various lines of black charring.  _ That’s an odd pattern for a bomb... _ And then she sees him.

Mac is crumpled against the wall beside the elevator, apparently flung there by the explosion. At first Riley’s afraid he’s dead, and then she sees his chest moving shallowly. And his eyes are open, but she doesn’t think he’s seeing her or Jack.  _ Concussion? _

Mac’s shirt is charred and shredded off him, his eyes are wide, and he’s staring at his hands in absolute panic. 

“What did I do?” he whispers.

“What do you mean what did you do?” Jack asks, shaking his head. “I think these idiots rigged their own place to blow and set it off with themselves in here. For once, I don’t think Matty can get mad at  _ you _ for destroying a place.”

“No, Jack, it was me.” Mac stands shakily. “I don’t know what happened,” he looks from Riley to Jack, as if he’s asking them to tell him it’s not true. “They were going to shoot us and it just...it wasn’t  _ me _ , I don’t know what happened. Everything was on fire, and it  _ hurt _ . It  _ still hurts _ . I didn’t know what was happening.” He looks down at the singed, ragged clothing hanging off him. “It was me but I don’t know how.”

“I do!” Jack basically shouts, startling Riley and making Mac cringe. “I told you so!” He sounds triumphant, even in the middle of this disaster. “I told you we’d get superpowers!”  _ Jack, this isn’t the time to gloat. _ “And man oh man I should have known yours would be blowing stuff up!”

“There's no way this is happening. It’s scientifically not possible.” Mac shakes his head, still stubborn. “I don’t know what this is, but it can’t be  _ that _ . Radiation doesn’t give people superpowers, it just kills them.” He sounds like he’s talking to himself more than to Jack, trying to convince himself of something maybe even he doesn’t believe anymore.

“Man, how long are you gonna try and convince yourself you didn't just blow up a warehouse?” 

“I know I did, Jack!” He shouts, and it sounds almost like a sob as well. “But I don’t know  _ how! _ ” 

“Let’s worry about this on the jet back to Phoenix, okay?” Riley can see that Mac’s edging toward a panic attack, and she’s not totally sure she believes he actually  _ did _ blow up the warehouse,  _ he might just have a hell of a concussion, _ but no sense in taking chances.

And then she sees it, as Mac begins to shake, huddling back against the wall. That red glow she saw in the infirmary.

Riley reacts on instinct, dodging and pulling Jack with her. “Jack, get back!”   
Suddenly, Mac’s arching away from them, body spasming, and a pair of crimson discs of light seem to fly out from his body. One slashes directly through a support beam, which collapses and begins to smoke along the sliced edges. The other careens up into the roof, cutting a slit through which some of the late evening sunlight filters in. 

Jack’s yelling. “That was awesome, man! Holy crap!” But Mac looks like he’s on the verge of collapse, his face twisted in agony, clutching at his chest. As Riley watches, he crumples to the floor.

“Jack, help me!” She rushes to Mac and rests her fingers along his carotid, feeling a rapid but steady pulse. She yanks her hand back almost immediately, his skin is scorching to touch. “Don’t touch him. Not right now.” She backs up a bit, and so does Jack. 

“Call for a medical evac,” he says; his comm must have gotten smashed when they hit the floor earlier. Riley taps hers and sighs. 

“Looks like that blast knocked them out.”

Mac groans and rolls over, panting. “Go, get out,” he gasps. “Stay away from me.”

“Mac, it’s okay, you’re okay. We’re going to get you home and we’re going to figure this out. We’ll find a way to fix it,” Riley promises. Because that’s what they do, isn’t it? They fix things. 

“No, I can’t!” Mac huddles even further away from them.

“Mac, I’m not leavin’ you here. We’re a team. We’re family. And some crazy flaming hula hoop of death superpower doesn’t change that.” Jack crouches down to look Mac in the eyes. “Look, I’m gonna be the first to say ‘I told you so’...”

“You know you already did, right?” Riley asks, shaking her head.

“Yeah, well, whatever, but I think it’s pretty freaking awesome, even if I never in a million years thought it was really gonna happen. And I am sure as hell not backing out on you know. It’s not like being around you is safe on your best days anyway.” Mac smiles, just a little.

Riley’s computer pings. Scanners are getting police cars inbound; she can already hear the sirens when she turns to listen. “Can you walk? Jack can’t carry you, you’ll burn him.” Mac nods, staggering to his feet, and the three of them limp out of the destroyed building together.

* * *

When she was a teenager, Riley used to wish she’d get superpowers. She’d read and reread her tattered Avengers and X-Men comics until they were grimy from her hands and had pages missing. She’d dreamed of waking up able to bend light, or make water obey her commands, or read minds.

She’d never understood why people in comics and movies wanted to get rid of their powers.  _ If I could do something as cool as shapeshift or make ice, I’d never want it gone. _ But now she thinks she might understand, watching Mac shudder and cry out in his sleep. From what she can hear, his nightmares are focused on the warehouse incident going very differently, and the whole team being part of the casualties. 

She wants to try and wake him up, but he begged her not to touch him. “Please, don’t come near me. I don’t know what sets it off and I can’t have that happen on the jet.” So all she can do is watch him dream.

Mac insists he be put in an isolation cell the second they step off the jet. Matty tries to talk him into going to medical, or psych, or anywhere other than the holding cells, but he refuses. So Riley watches him walk away, still shaky, to the basement.

The debrief feels like it takes forever. Riley had sent Matty the basic information in-flight, but apparently hearing it from her and Jack themselves is enough to put the normally calm director into a frenzy of activity. She’s calling in all medical personnel who had anything to do with Mac’s recent illness, she’s giving Riley keywords to scan every international database for, and it sounds like she’s actually getting in touch with Oversight when they leave the War Room. 

“What are we gonna do, Jack?” Riley asks, standing in the hall, her rig in her hands. She feels like the world is ending. 

This can’t be happening. She’ll wake up, and they’ll still be on the jet to Sarajevo, and Mac will be...normal-Mac weird, not this crazy sci-fi thing that she still can’t believe is happening. But she doesn’t wake up. And as wrong as it feels,  _ this _ is real life now.

* * *

Mac said he wanted them to leave him alone. But Riley saw the shattered look on his face when he walked away from them, and she can’t bear to let him sit in some cold, lonely cell blaming himself for all of this. She knows how he reacts to anything he thinks is his fault. He was distraught after Zoe Kimura died, and now he thinks if things had been different he could have killed his own team, his family.

Matty forces Riley to go to medical and get her dislocated shoulder treated, and she washes the soot off her hands and face and changes her shirt before she goes to the detention wing. No sense in walking in with too many reminders of how close she was to all the destruction.

She feels a slight chill run down her spine when she walks into the row of cells, the way she always will. This is too familiar. But it shouldn’t be to Mac. She’s already seen him locked away once, and it hurt. This is almost worse, because even though he’s physically much safer than he was in that supermax last year, she knows inside he’s falling apart.

She finds the cell he’s in without too much trouble. The door is warmer than the others when she touches it to key in her code, and she glances through the small window. 

Mac’s sitting on the edge of the cot, elbows on his knees, staring at his hands folded in his lap. He hasn’t changed, or bothered to clean up, even though there are clean clothes on the end of the cot and a sink in the corner. His hair is still full of ash, his hands and face are streaked with soot, and his ruined shirt hangs loosely off his shoulders. 

For someone holding that much power, he looks strangely broken and vulnerable. 

Riley thinks this might be the first time she’s seen Mac willingly stay in a locked room. She keys in the combination and the door slides open with a soft hiss. Mac looks up, and his eyes are a strange mixture of fear and pleading.

“Riley, what are you doing here?”

“I came to talk.” She steps inside and closes the door.

“I don’t want to talk! Leave me alone.”  _ He sounds like a petulant teenager.  _ Mac turns away and stares at the floor. “Get out of here, Riley.” She hears the soft whisper after the harsh words. “Please…”

And she does. Because there was a red shimmer in the air around him, and if whatever it is happens again, and she gets hurt, he’ll never forgive himself.

* * *

Everyone assumes it will be Jack who can get Mac out of his self-imposed isolation. After all, Jack is always the one who can help Mac with anything. He's been there for Mac the longest of any of them, he's basically the father figure in his life, and he's also more or less a big brother. If anyone can make Mac see that he's not a monster, it should be Jack. 

The former Delta spends hours in the basement, talking to Mac, but it doesn’t seem to be changing his mind one bit.

Riley watches the security feeds from the holding cells almost obsessively. Mac is putting on a brave face for the others when they come, but when he’s alone Riley sees him falling apart. He doesn’t sleep more than an hour at a time, and when he does, she can see him thrashing and screaming from nightmares. She watches him claw at his chest the way he did when he was sick, and she can’t ignore the way he stares at his hands like he’s looking at scorpions. She talks to Jack before she goes to see Mac again, and what he tells her isn’t helping her anxiety. “He barely talks to me. He just sits there and any time I get close to him he starts shaking and...glowing. And then he panics even more and I have to back off before it gets worse.” Riley can see the deep shadows under Jack’s eyes. His kid is hurting, and Jack feels powerless to help.

When Riley goes to see Mac, she already knows it won’t be like the last time. And it’s not. He looks a little less disheveled; he’s cleaned himself up and changed clothes, but his eyes aren’t anything like the Mac she knows. They’re a million miles away, and she can see darkness in them competing with a flickering flame.

“Get out,” he mutters, hands curling into fists. “I told Jack not to let anyone else come.”

“Yeah, well, Jack’s worried about you, and so am I.” Riley honestly doesn’t know what she can say that would be anything better than Jack.  _ He knows Mac so much better. He’s been there longer. _ But Riley knows what it’s like to feel like no one should trust you. To feel like you’ve gone too far and there’s no turning back.

“Stay away from me. Don’t come any closer, Riley.” His voice is almost a snarl. “I told you to get out!”

“I’m not going until you stop wallowing in self-pity and start doing something productive. The MacGyver I know doesn't give up.”  _ If he wants to play harsh, I can give as good as I get. He’s not going to hurt my feelings easily. _ Riley knows he doesn’t mean it. 

“You don’t know anything about it!” Mac snaps, spinning toward her. She sees the red glow around his hands and flinches in spite of herself. Mac sees it too, and he crumples, sagging back onto the cot. The glow disappears.

Mac cringes away from her. “Riley, stay away. I'm dangerous. I could hurt you!” He looks at her sling, then back to her face. “I already have.”

“It was just a dislocated shoulder, Mac.”

“But next time it might not be. I can’t go back in the field. I can’t go anywhere, I don’t know what makes this happen, or if there’s any reason at all. I can’t be around people.” Without his normal paper clips, his hands are shaking, nervous. 

“So what are you going to do? Spend the rest of your life in this cell?”

“If it keeps everyone else safe, I’ll do whatever I have to do.”

* * *

Riley can’t bear the thought of Mac sitting there in the cold, lonely cell day after day for the rest of his life. Jack’s still trying to get through to him, but Mac’s no longer even fighting back. He’s retreated into himself, silent, frightened.

Everyone’s tried talking to him at some point. Matty and Bozer both did their best to tell him they're not afraid of him, but he didn't even seem to listen.  _ Maybe it’s time to accept that he wants this. _ Riley doesn’t really see an alternative, not when Mac’s fear of hurting someone is so possible. They don’t know anything about what’s happened, they don’t know how to fix it, if they even can…

She has one last idea. It’s a long shot, it’s not even a good long shot, but it’s probably got a greater chance of success than half the things Mac’s done on missions. So she’s going for it.

This time, when she enters the cell, Mac doesn’t even get up from where he’s lying on his bed, face turned to the wall. 

Riley sits down, reaches into her pocket, and pulls out a handful of paperclips she took from the War Room table. She reaches for one of Mac’s hands, and he pulls back, flinching like she’s the one whose touch burns.

“Mac, please, we need you to come back. You’re the only one who might be able to figure out how to make this stop.” He glances at her, a tiny bit of hope glinting in dull blue eyes.

“There has to be some rational scientific explanation for this, right?”

Mac takes the paperclips from her, beginning to bend one out of its original shape immediately. 

“Mac, you can find a way to fix anything. You can fix this, I know you can.” Riley puts a hand on his leg, ignoring the heat, and he looks at her almost sadly. “Now get out of here, go down to the labs, and get to work.”

“You sound like Matty,” he smiles just a little.

“I guess I take after Mom in some ways too then.” She stands up. “Now come on. You’re a genius, right? I’m sure you can figure this one out.”


	3. Chapter 3

It’s incredibly reassuring to see Mac scurrying around the labs, picking up random pieces of equipment and muttering equations and science facts under his breath. Even with freaky superpowers his brain doesn’t stop being his biggest superpower of all.

It seems normal. So normal Riley almost lets herself believe it. Until someone somewhere in the lab drops a glass beaker that shatters, Mac jumps, and Riley sees the red glow. 

“Okay, so what are you doing exactly?” Riley thinks maybe she can get Mac to go into one of his nerdy science lectures. Maybe if he starts using all those big words, he can look at this a little more objectively and forget, even if just for a minute or two, that he’s talking about himself. 

“Well, I’m trying to find out what’s causing these power surges. As far as I can tell from the effect they had on things around them, they’re supercharged plasma blasts.”

“Ok?” Riley’s racking her brain for where she’s heard that before. 

“That’s kind of cool,” Bozer mutters, walking over with some bundle of wires and tubes Riley doesn’t recognize. “Aside from the ‘blowing up a building while inside it’ part, you know.”

Mac sets three vials of blood on the table. “I’m going to compare this to the blood we have in storage.” 

Riley thought it was a little weird, when she started, that for the first few months she was asked to come in to the infirmary and have blood collected. When she found out it was a requirement for field agents so the medical staff could have perfectly matched blood available, it became only slightly less weird. 

She wonders idly how many times Mac’s needed to use that safeguard, then decides she’s better off not knowing.

Mac carefully drips samples of the new and old blood onto slides, slipping them under the microscope. The first one he looks at is the old blood, taking much longer than he usually does to analyze what he’s seeing and write it down.  _ Is he stalling? Afraid to see what the second slide holds? _ But he can’t put it off forever.

He lifts the second slide and pushes it under the lens. 

Riley can see his normally rock-steady hands, fingers that can defuse an IED in minutes, possibly seconds, trembling uncontrollably. She wishes Jack was here, but he’s in the War Room with Matty. She doesn’t know what they’re talking about, and she has the feeling she doesn’t want to. It might be about how to deal with Mac’s new...powers. 

“Mac, it’s okay.” She rests a hand on his shoulder, feeling the heat burning through the plaid flannel he’s wearing. “You’re still you, no matter what you find in there.” Mac smiles at her, just a little, then adjusts the lenses.

Riley can see the images from the microscope on her computer as well. The blood cells are almost pulsing, fastest where they’re directly above the light source.  _ That’s odd... _

“Huh.” Mac shifts the slide shakily to get a better look, and then there’s a small crackling sound and the glass slide shatters. 

“What was  _ that _ ?” Bozer asks.

“I don’t know. Riley, you were recording, right?”

“I was.” She hits playback, and she and Mac and Bozer watch the blood cells throb, glow, and then spark out in that odd red glow. 

“They were moving fastest around the light,” Riley observes. She’s not a science geek like Mac, but that seemed important.

“It looks like they’re responding to the heat, or the light, or maybe both.” Mac drips blood on a new slide. “I’m going to try something.” This time, he takes a small metal probe and a bunsen burner, and holds the probe in the heat until it begins to glow slightly. When he brings it near the slide, there’s the same jittering action from the blood on that side, and then the slide cracks again in a small arc of that strange glow, this time a larger one.

Jack walks in just as a small vial explodes in the microwave. “Hey, Mac, was that blood?”

“I think that was supposed to be the foodsafe microwave…” Bozer mutters halfheartedly.

Jack more or less ignores him. “What are you doing?”

“I’ll replace it, Boze. I was testing something.”

Jack looks from the mess-that-could-have-come-from-a-horror-movie to Mac. “Testing what, exactly? Your cooking skills? Let’s face it, man, this is not an improvement.”

Mac shakes his head, but he’s smiling just a little. Riley can tell Jack’s jokes are the ‘trying too hard’ kind right now. He used to do the same thing when he was trying to get her to warm up to him.  _ He’s worried sick about the way Mac’s been acting and now he’s starting to feel unsure about their relationship, after Mac’s started shutting us out. _ “It appears that my cells are suddenly able to absorb large amounts of any form of radiation. Heat, light, microwaves, anything. And then they’re storing it and releasing it all in a single massive blast.” 

“Now why couldn’t you have gotten this _ before _ New Orleans?” Jack laughs. “Woulda saved you the burnt hands and those goofy mittens at least.”

Mac looks at him. “Jack, this isn’t funny.” He sighs, sitting down heavily on one of the stools and resting his head in his hands. “It means anything, anything, could be what’s making me lash out.”

“It happens when you’re startled, or angry, or frightened,” Riley says quietly. “Because it’s not like you just store up energy until there’s too much for your body to handle, and then it happens. You’re fine, maybe until something raises your heart rate…”

“Oooh like the Hulk!” Jack says. “Maybe you’ve just got to learn some calming techniques…”

Mac sighs and his head drops even lower. “Jack, I was an EOD. I know pretty much every way to stay calm under pressure there is.”

“We should find out what the threshold is,” Bozer suggests.

“We don’t know how bad this could be. Last time I almost leveled a warehouse. I haven’t had an incident since, and I don’t know how much energy’s built up. I could blow up half the Phoenix again. Or the whole building.”

Bozer speaks up. “Then let’s do this outside, where that’s not an issue. Riley, you can monitor his vitals remotely, right?”

“Sure.” Riley picks up her rig. “Let’s do it.”

* * *

“Man, why do you have to be in such good shape? It’s taking  _ forever _ for your heart rate to go over 140,” Jack grumbles. He swats angrily at a fly buzzing around his head. “Can you get this over with so we can get back to air conditioning and our very nice bug-free building? You know how I feel about flies after Panama, man.”

“Leave it...to you...to complain...about me...being healthy…” Riley can hear Mac’s panting breaths through the comms. She’s tracking his vitals remotely, watching from her rig as his heart rate slowly rises.

Mac’s nearly a mile away from them, running a stretch of trail that’s now supposedly “closed due to cougar sightings”, thanks to a couple calls from Matty and Bozer’s startlingly accurate cougar impression, which sent a group of runners straight to the nearest park authorities.  

Riley leans back on the bench she’s got her rig resting on. “Maybe by the time we get back, Frankie will have some news for us.” Mac had sent some of his blood samples to his old MIT colleague. He’d been able to determine a difference in DNA structure between the two samples, but had told them Frankie’s more sophisticated equipment could tell them a lot more. 

“Well, as long as we’re waiting here, I’m gonna try and find you a good superhero name,” Jack mutters, pulling out his phone. “Okay….Ummmm….I know that power seemed familiar...I was close! Maybe you’re not Professor X, but you’ve got the exact same powers as Havok!”

Riley’s computer begins to beep, cutting her off from telling Jack how utterly unhelpful trying to give Mac a code name that’s synonymous with destruction is going to be.

“Heart rate’s above 150. Anything changing?”

“N...nothing.” Mac sounds winded but as fine as he can be for the circumstances. “I don’t...feel anything...but tired...and sweaty.”

Riley waits until they get as far as 175, but she’s beginning to think her idea was a dud.  Mac comes back, exhausted and dripping sweat, but there’s nothing to indicate his powers ever flared up.

“So, it’s not heart rate triggered,” Bozer says. “Could it be some kind of self-defense mechanism?”

“He might be right. As far as I can tell, your power’s only ever showed up when you’re in danger, or angry, or frightened,” Riley says. 

“You know, when I said you needed a better sense of self-preservation, this was not what I had in mind,” Jack says as they walk back down the hill to the Jeep. It’s Mac’s car, but Jack’s driving, because Mac doesn’t trust himself to. He didn’t even want to leave the Phoenix at all, but Riley thinks being out in the fresh air and sunlight is probably good for him. He’s been in that cell for almost two weeks now. 

_ We need to find a way to fix this. Because that can’t be what the rest of his life becomes. _

* * *

When they get back, Matty’s waiting at the War Room door. “Ms. Daniels is on the phone for you.”

Riley never met Frankie in person, but she’s heard Mac talk glowingly about his brilliant MIT colleague. The woman on the video call smiles when she’s introduced to Riley. “Mac tells me you’re a genius when it comes to computers. Any chance you could fix the way this dumb thing keeps freezing during calls?” 

“Maybe, let me see.” Riley logs into the chat. “Looks like your problem is the SFPD’s crappy wifi. If your phone has a hotspot, try connecting to that.” Frankie does, and suddenly the pixelated static is gone.

“Thanks. Mac was right, you are a wizard with that thing.”

She laughs, but then her voice and face go serious.

“Mac, what’s all this about? You know I’m busy at the San Francisco PD’s crime lab, and you call me out of the blue, tell me you’re sending me something very urgent to look at, and then give me blood samples like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m sorry, Frankie, but you were the only person I trusted with this.”

“Which is why I’m concerned. What’s happening? Because I did a full-scale phenotype and genotype of this blood, and it’s a dead-on match for you.”

“I promise, I’ll explain everything later. But I need to know what you found in it.”

“Well, I typed both samples like you asked, and they’re identical except for one thing. There’s an extra gene spliced into the DNA in the second sample.” Frankie’s typing. “I’m sending you the results now. It’s nothing I’ve ever seen before. I’ve tried to match it to anything in any genetics database I have access to, and it’s coming up blank.”

“There’s no match?”

“Not in anything I can access. There’s a highly classified database that I’m denied entry to. It’s defunct, but it was curated by something called DXS. It’s private, and I can’t even request temporary access. But that’s the only place I haven’t looked.”

Riley can see Matty’s face change.  _ She knows something. _ Riley makes a mental note to start sweeping the Phoenix servers for that database.

“As far as I can tell, the radiation activated a dormant gene. It’s not visible in the older samples unless they’re exposed to significant levels of gamma radiation. But as soon as they are, they start to change. And not in any way I’ve ever seen cells react to radiation. They’re not dying, they’re getting stronger.”

“Do you think there’s any way to reverse it?”

“Once the mutation happens, the gene splicing appears to be permanent. It’s like the sample was never normal in the first place. I’ll keep working on it, but that’s all I can tell you now." A door opens in the background, and Frankie looks toward it, sighing. "I have to go, I’ve got over a hundred unsolved cases on my plate that need attention too.” She hangs up the call. 

Mac sighs softly. “Guess it means I’m not getting rid of this any time soon.”

“Well, we kinda have to call him Havok now.”

Riley glares at him. “Jack, stop.”

“What, Riley, it fits!”

“He’s not wrong,” Mac says bitterly. 

“Jack, leave him alone. He’s not some character in a comic book or a movie. This is Mac’s  _ life. _ ” 

“If we have that database on file, maybe I can run Frankie’s results through it,” Riley says, pulling out her computer.

“That file is Alpha level eyes only clearance,” Matty says. “We’d need direct approval from Oversight to even see it. I don’t know how your friend found it.” She turns to Mac. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“You’ll see what you can do?” Riley hears the barely contained anger. “Matty, that’s not good enough. Look at what’s happened! I can’t live like this! If you know anything, please, you have to tell me!”

“Mac, there are protocols…”

“I thought you cared about me. But first my dad, now this...maybe all you care about is whether I do the job you send me out there for!” Mac snaps.

“What is this?” Matty turns around. “What about your father?”

“You were investigating him! For the CIA! Yes, I know about it, and why didn’t you  _ tell me! _ ” Riley’s never heard Mac this angry. Never. And it’s a little scary. It’s even scarier given that the room’s temperature is rising dramatically and Riley can see Mac’s skin  _ glowing. _

“Mac…”

He doesn’t hear her. “You’ve been hiding secrets from me for months, Matty! Why? Why would you do that to me?”

“Mac, calm down!” Jack shouts, because now there’s a bright red gleam around his hands, and Riley can almost see the rings starting to form, like crazy hula hoops of light, around his chest.

Mac startles, jumping backward, but it’s too late. The same glowing disks Riley saw at the warehouse shoot through the room, smashing into the glass and gouging black, smoldering streaks in the walls.

Mac crumples to the floor as everyone in the hallway turns and stares. And then Riley remembers that no one else knew the real truth about Sarajevo. There were rumors, but almost everyone thought it was more like what happened at Christmas, that a bomb Mac created was what took down the terrorists. Someone screams. 

“What the hell was that?” Someone else shouts, and there’s confused babbling and angry yelling. Riley can’t take her eyes off Mac. He’s huddled as small as he can make himself, shaking and gasping.

For once, Matty doesn’t yell about the fact Mac destroyed something. She just rests a hand on his shoulder and gently pulls him to lean against her.

“I’m sorry, Matty,” Riley hears him choke out, it sounds like he’s started to cry.

“Mac, it’s not your fault.” Matty runs her fingers through his hair.

“Yes, it is. I can’t control this and someone’s going to get hurt. You should have made me stay in a cell, Matty, I’m a monster.” Riley feels her heart shatter. No one gets to tell sweet, kind, caring Mac that he’s a monster. Not even himself. 

“No, no, no, that’s not true.” She sinks to her knees beside him as Jack does the same. “Mac, no one thinks that.”

“They do.” He sniffles, looking past Jack out the smashed windows, into the hall where more and more people are gathering, muttering, pointing. 

Jack moves to block his view. “They don’t matter, Mac. The only people who matter are right here in this room with you.”

“We’re going to be right here, for whatever you need,” Matty says softly. “Mac, I’m sorry what I did has hurt you so much. I promise I’m not trying to hide anything from you to manipulate you. I’m trying to keep you safe. I promise, when you’re ready to hear it, I’ll tell you everything about your father. And I  _ will _ want to know how you found out about my files. Someday.” Bozer looks guiltily at his feet. “But all that can wait. Right now, we need to find a way to help you.”

“I don’t think you can. You heard Frankie, we can’t fix it. I can’t get rid of this.” He gulps, sobbing, looking down at his hands.

Matty sighs and pulls Mac a little closer, running her fingers through his hair. “She didn’t have every answer she needed. I’ll do what I can to get access to the database. But you have to understand, Mac, _I_ can’t even get into it without Oversight giving me access codes.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I yelled at you, and I’m sorry I didn’t trust you…”

“Shhh. Mac, it’s okay. We’ll talk about all of this later, I promise. Right now the most important thing is figuring this out.” Matty takes his hand, and he flinches, pulling away from her.

“I’m going back to the basement.” Mac pushes past them, turning away from the stares and chatter in the hallway.

Riley follows him. “Mac…”

“I said, I’m going! Are you going to stop me, Riley?” He turns, and she can see the crimson reflected in his eyes. “I could have killed all of you, just because I was upset about my dad. I’m not safe to be around. Please, please, don’t come near me.” He’s backing away from her, shaking, tears streaming down his face. “Just stay away from me!”

Riley watches him walk away, her own face damp from crying.  _ I thought we were helping him. Maybe we’ve only made it worse. _


	4. Chapter 4

Riley can feel the steady thrum of the jet’s engines in her bones. This isn’t their normal ride; in the Phoenix jet, Riley can't hear or feel the engines. This is one of the hazardous asset transports, and further back in the cargo bay, Mac is sitting inside the cube of bullet-proof, explosion-rated composite panels. The last time they used this plane was to transport an armed nuclear warhead.  

Riley can see inside, even though the thick composite makes everything blurry. It’s ironic, she thinks, that Mac literally engineered this material, and now it’s being used to confine him. He’s curled up on the floor, and looks like he might have fallen asleep. Riley sighs and turns her attention back to the screen showing how far out they are.

Matty’s pulled a few strings, and the old DXS facility in Colorado is their destination. built in the 1960s, the building was equipped with a fully reinforced bomb shelter capable of withstanding a nuclear blast. 

None of them were willing to let Mac spend the rest of his life locked up. It’s taken three weeks of convincing and maneuvering, but the fact that Mac actually agreed to come with them is a good sign. The facility is in the mountains, in the middle of nowhere, was decommissioned in 1982. Mac won’t need to walk through the halls and hear the gossip and feel the stares.

The only personnel on site are the building maintenance and some low-level security. The facility is now just a high-tech storage area. 

The plane banks and begins to descend. Riley sees Mac shift, then shudder. 

“Before you ask, no, we’re not there yet,” Jack calls back from the cockpit. “Just avoiding some nasty weather ahead.”

“Thank you, Jack, we’re not twelve,” Riley shouts back.

“Yeah, Jack, we’re adults!” Bozer says. “We don’t ask ‘are we there yet’.” He turns to Riley and whispers, “How much longer?”

“About forty-five minutes,” Riley replies softly. She’s anxious for landing too. Watching Mac trapped in that box is tearing her apart. 

She continues working on her research while she waits, scouring everything she can find for anything remotely like what’s happening to Mac. Her dark web past has come in handy, and there are several reports, unconfirmed, of people with superhuman abilities. A rash of killings that seem animalistic across northern Oregon and Montana, video of a man apparently levitating a car in Tijuana, a Roma woman in Hungary with blue sparks rising from her hands. A few months ago, Riley would have dismissed it all as hoaxes or really good CG editing. But now, she’s starting to think those tinfoil-hat people may not be as crazy as they seem. 

* * *

Jack lands them easily on the runway outside the base, taxiing the plane into a small, camouflaged hangar and clearing them with the base security. Riley cringes at the way the flight manifest had to register Mac, not as an agent, but as ‘asset cargo’ due to the method of transport. Mac insisted; it was the only way they’d been able to get the use of the hazard transport, but she still sees him flinch when the security officer asks, not for Mac’s name, but for the cargo code, before he’s allowed to walk off the plane.  _ He already feels dehumanized enough, was this really necessary? _ But if it gets him somewhere safe, where they can find a way to help him, it might be worth it.

Mac looks awful when they step out of the hangar. He’s far too thin, he blinks nervously at the sunlight, and Riley can see the patchy stubble on his face.  _ Like a prisoner of war. _ His hands are tightly wrapped, the way they were after New Orleans. He’d insisted on that, for all that Riley told him it probably wouldn’t do any good. 

The base is built into the side of a mountain, a low archway opening into the black interior. Riley shivers at the chill air wafting out. It feels ominous, like the set of a horror movie. She can tell Bozer has the same jitters. He’s shuddering, and his left hand is twitching.

Inside, the building smells sterile and stale all at once. There isn’t a single bug chittering around the buzzing fluorescent lights, the walls are clean, and the floors are slick and shining. It doesn’t look anything like Riley’s mental picture of “abandoned spy base.”

The rather over-enthusiastic security guard gives them a running commentary as they pass empty mess halls, an unused field training room, and a large, frosted-glass door marked ‘pool’. 

“We’ll be sure and put up a sign on anything you guys want to use so you have free access and staff don’t bother you. Our guys are used to having the run of the facility, but I’ll make sure Warrick and Hardin don’t decide to go skinny-dipping while you’re here.” Riley’s not sure if he’s joking or not. 

“We’ve got a small suite of rooms set up for you. Propane stove, water heater, everything you’ll need. They told me you’ll probably want to use the labs and the bomb shelter.” He looks skeptical, but he’s probably been warned not to ask questions.“There’s electricity on all levels, but you have to switch it on from the mains at the control office separately for any level you want to use.” 

He stops at a heavy steel door marked “Private”. “These are the guest suites. Make yourselves at home.”

Four rooms open into a small kitchenette and common space. The chairs are incredibly tacky and garish, and Riley thinks her eyes might never recover from the combination of puce and burnt orange. Everything in the kitchen could have walked straight out of a 70’s sitcom. 

“Wow,” is all she can manage to get out.

“Hell yeah, wow,” Jack grins. “The seventies knew how to do it right.” He’s already headed for the rooms surrounding the small common area, trying doors.  _ I forgot just how strange Jack’s taste in interior design can be. _

Riley studies the facility map on the door. First floor, where they are, houses the personnel quarters, training areas, and kitchens. Below them is the biolab level, and below that a floor for physics and engineering, complete with a wind tunnel and vehicle testing facility. And below that, the fallout bunker, designed to easily house the building’s projected fifteen hundred occupant capacity. 

Bozer’s already picked his room, and Jack is apparently trying to decide between the one where everything is a shade of red that should be illegal, and one that kind of looks like a Woodstock rave threw up in it.  _ What kind of scientists lived here before it closed down? Maybe the mad kind. _

Mac is sitting quietly in one of the awful chairs, bandaged hands in his lap. 

“Hey, you okay, or did the color scheme get to you too?” Riley asks. 

“Funny.” He sounds far too quiet. “I just...what if we can’t do anything? What if we came all the way out here, and I don’t get any better?” He sounds like he’s dying of a terminal cancer, not dealing with a power beyond Riley’s wildest imagination. 

“Mac, look at this place.” Riley quickly amends that. “Well, maybe not right here, this is kind of horrifying, but did you see what’s here? Biolabs, engineering, and it’s all at your disposal. You’re gonna be like a kid in a candy store down there. I’m sure you can find something that will help.”

“Thank you.” He stands up slowly. “I don’t know why you’re all still here, after everything, but I’m grateful.”

“Mac, we’re your family.” Riley hugs him, and he flinches away for a moment before taking a deep breath and letting her hold him, even though she can feel the stiffness in his body and the shudder running through him. “We’re not going anywhere, no matter what.”

“Not even after I kind of literally blew up at Matty?” He smiles just a little.

“You’re just having your rebellious teenager phase a few years late,” Bozer says as he walks back in. “And can I just say, I think the fact that 70’s trends are starting to come back is the beginning of the fashion apocalypse? This place is a nightmare.” 

“Speak for yourself, man.” Jack’s just discovered that the third room, where the key only worked after he’d fought with it for the past five minutes, is covered in Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Rolling Stones, and Areosmith posters. “I call dibs over here.”

Once they’ve all settled in (Riley got left with the Woodstock room, which she thinks might actually give her a psychedelic trip before this is over), they head for the real reason they’re here, the fallout bunker. Once they’ve switched on the lights, they get into the ominously creaking elevator and head for the basement. 

The fallout shelter is a long, open room with a low, arched ceiling. There are smaller doors to the sides, probably leading to supply rooms, but the main area itself is simply an open room roughly half the size of a football field. The walls are solid, reinforced concrete, and every step echoes in the empty, dead space.

“Okay, do your thing,” Jack says.   
Mac gives Jack the sideways glance he saves for when Jack says something Mac finds ridiculously simplistic. “First of all, that’s  _ not _ how this works. I can’t just turn it off and on like a light switch. And second, you saw how unpredictable it is. Even if you’re behind me there’s no guarantee I won’t hit you.”

“Come on, there’s got to be a way to tap into it. Like, think of something that makes you really mad. Like the time I threw out your potato clock because I thought you were trying to make a potato that baked itself and you’d failed.” Jack chuckles.

Mac shakes his head. “It’s not like I can’t think of ten things, right now, that are frustrating enough to make me spontaneously combust, but I don’t think that’s going to get me any closer to being in control.”

“Maybe you should just visualize it. You know, like you told me to do playing basketball. See yourself making a nothing but net shot, and then just go for it,” Bozer suggests. 

Mac doesn’t say anything, but he unwraps his hands, clenches them into fists, and closes his eyes. Just as the first faint red shimmers begin to glow around him, his eyes fly open. 

“I can’t do it. It’s not happening.”

“It was just about to,” Riley says. “Try again, maybe it just takes practice.” She knows she sounds like a hovering mom, but they need to figure something out or Mac’s just going to drive himself crazy. Once he finds a problem, he doesn’t stop until they have a solution.

Jack shakes his head. “You were almost there.” His voice changes. “Succeed, you will, if master the force you do. Do or do not, there is no try.” Riley can’t help giggling a little. 

Mac rolls his eyes, but he does close them and clench his fists again. And once again, the minute the red glow appears, he stops. “It’s just not gonna happen, guys.”

And just like that, Riley gets it.  _ He’s trying not to let it happen. _ Mac’s not able to tap into his power because he doesn’t want to. Every time he gets close, he gets scared and shuts down. He’s never used his power voluntarily, and the only memories associated with it are ones of being out of control and helpless to stop it.

“Mac, no one is going to get hurt. This place is safe. You’re safe, and so are we. It’s okay, you’ll be okay. But you have to let yourself do this.” She puts her hand on his arm. “You don’t have to be afraid of yourself. We aren’t afraid of you.”

He gives her an almost tearful look. “But I am.”

“Do you know how many times you’ve gotten me blown up?” Jack asks. “Afghanistan, that truck bomb with the virus, New York, the Latvian embassy, your own damn house! I haven’t run away yet, have I? And this isn’t gonna be any different. You go kaboom, I go kaboom, remember?”

“Please, everyone, stay behind me,” Mac pleads before starting again. And this time, when the glow starts, he doesn’t open his eyes. Riley watches the twin rings of light form, then shoot out, slashing along the walls. Mac’s body twists, almost as if he’s trying to direct them, but the next few go wild as well, leaving flaming streaks on the floor, walls, and ceiling.

When Mac stops, he’s panting, but he doesn’t seem to be in the excruciating pain he was before. 

“Wow. This officially tops the football stadium meltdown,” Bozer says, staring in awe at the smoldering room. “Are we sure you haven’t had these powers all along?”

“Pretty sure,” Mac says, staring at the flames. “I think we would have known.”

“Man, I always said you were more destructive than a new puppy in the house, but this is definitely taking it to a new level,” Jack chuckles, and Mac glares at him.

“I told you I couldn’t control it.”

“Maybe it’s just going to take time,” Riley suggests.

Bozer suddenly looks up. “Or something to channel it.” He looks at them and starts to smile. “I have an idea.”

* * *

The labs are filled with equipment, outdated but still in pristine condition.  _ Guess the cleaning crew has nothing better to do. _ Riley wanders the stock rooms with the list Mac and Boze handed her, gathering the items and returning to where Mac has commandeered three tables, all of which are covered in wires, random pieces of metal, sci-fi looking tools, and strange chemicals.

“What are you building?” She asks as she hands him the next set of items. 

“Hopefully, something that focuses the energy. It’s too random now. He could hit anything he’s near.” Bozer’s putting together a series of wires and plates into concentric circles. 

Mac nods. “Theoretically, the energy should all be conducted through this, which will focus it into a single beam. Which should be easier to control.”

When Jack comes back with more tools, he wants to hear all about it too. “Are you actually building a super-suit?”

“Pretty much,” Bozer says. “I wish I had something better to work with than these old flight uniforms and lab gear, but I guess neon yellow and navy blue is what we’re gonna get.” Riley watches him layer rubberized, flame-retardant pieces of bio-lab hazard suits over insulated flight suit material. 

It takes two days for them to finish all the fine tuning, even with Riley and Jack pitching in. When they’re done, Riley’s both impressed and a little freaked out by the finished product. The series of concentric metal plates has been attached to the suit Bozer whipped up, which has a network of wires on the inside designed to conduct all the ambient energy to the front disk. There are also built in sensors Riley can use to monitor the energy charge and Mac’s vitals.

“I feel like it’s halloween again,” Mac says when he changes into it and sees his reflection in one of the labs’ glass doors. 

“Hey, don’t knock the artist’s vision,” Bozer laughs, mock insulted. “I did the best I could with the whole ‘abandoned by the seventies’ aura we’ve got here. And hey, if it works, you’d really better not complain.”

* * *

The basement still looks like a war zone when they step out of the elevator. A cleaning crew has swept up the ash, but the walls are still charred.

“Okay, round two,” Jack says. Mac shakes his head, closes his eyes, and Riley watches the numbers on her rig tick up. Body temp, heart rate, and something Mac has labeled “plasma charge X”. 

This experiment isn’t actually much better than last time. Instead of the energy and concussive force being spread out over a wide area, it’s concentrated in one place, and the result is that as soon as Mac uses his power, he’s knocked back by a recoil like firing a gun. 

When they quit for the day, the basement is on fire again, Mac has more bruises than he does after at least half his normal missions, and Riley’s beginning to wonder if this actually is an improvement.

None of which prepares her for the next morning. 

When she gets up, Jack and Bozer have already eaten, left their dishes in the sink, and left a note taped to the door. 

“Went to the basement. Bring Mac and the suit. We have a plan.”  _ If Jack has a plan, I don’t even want to know what it is. _

It takes some convincing to get Mac to agree; he’s both skittish and sore after yesterday’s disaster. But finally, they’re in the elevator and on their way down. 

Riley’s not sure what she was expecting to see when the doors opened, but it was  _ not _ this. Jack has a punching dummy set up in the middle of the room, a large duct-tape X across its chest. He steps to one side of it while Bozer stands on the other.

“Don’t hit me, and we’re all good, got it?” Jack’s too upbeat, too quick to laugh. He’s scared. Beside him, Bozer is edging toward the side of the bunker one slow shuffle at a time. 

“You’re serious?” Mac’s staring at them, wide-eyed and frightened.

“I am. I have complete and utter faith in you.” Riley sees his lips moving after that and can just make out the words.  _ “Please don’t blow me up, kid.” _

Mac bites his lip and clenches his fists. And Riley watches the crimson beam shoot across the room, obliterate the dummy, and leave Jack and Bozer untouched, although the second it’s over they’re screaming, probably in a combination of excitement and relief.

Jack shouts across the room, “I told you there was a good kind, man!”

“Jack, I still don’t think this qualifies as the  _ good _ kind of radiation...” But Mac’s laughing in spite of himself. Riley feels the tightness in her chest that’s been there since Sarajevo begin to dissolve. 

And then her phone rings, and when she sees it’s Matty, she winces. 

“Matty?”

“There’s something Mac needs to hear.” Matty says quietly. “But he and Jack aren’t answering their phones.”

“That’s cause Mac just managed to hit a training dummy instead of Jack or Bozer.”

“Wh...I don’t even want to know. Just put Mac on the phone. If he isn’t currently on fire.” Riley smiles a little.

When she hands Mac the phone, he immediately launches into describing what just happened. “You’re never going to believe this. It’s actually working, and I think I’m learning how to make it work  _ for  _ me…” Then the excitement in his face changes to a look of concern and confusion. “Yeah, Matty, it’s worth trying. We have to.”

He hangs up and turns to them. “Somehow, word’s gotten out, about Sarajevo and...all of this. And apparently, Patty Thornton’s reached out to Phoenix and wants to speak to me. She’s saying she has something I need to know.”


	5. Chapter 5

Riley sits next to Mac on the flight back. He’s twisting a paperclip into the shape of a knife.  _ It’s never easy, thinking about having to see the person who lied to you for years again.  _ It’s like meeting Elwood again, hoping for the best but expecting the worst. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“If she has any answers, we have to try.” Mac won’t look her in the eyes.

“We’re not going to let you go alone.” She and Jack will be there, just in case. No one needs another incident, and she doesn’t think the supermax Thornton is in will let Mac get by with all the metal in that suit. He’s going to need to stay calm. 

“She’d better hope she’s got six feet of plexiglass between her and me, cause I’m not gonna need superpowers to let her know what I think of what she did,” Jack calls back from the cockpit.  _ On second thought, maybe it shouldn’t be Jack who goes. But I think Mac needs him there. For some stability. _

Riley wishes she was more like Cage, able to get into people’s heads and find the truth even if they didn’t want to tell it. But she just can’t quite manage it. And she has the feeling, with Thornton, they’re going to need to dig deep. The woman hid the fact that she was a traitor from everyone. Even the people who knew her longest. She’s not calling them to talk out of the kindness of her heart. She wants something. 

* * *

Visiting any prison will never get easier. Riley doesn’t care what way she goes inside, inmate or visitor. And this place is just too much like the one she spent two years surviving. Every slamming door, every guard, every light bulb and bar and wall and jumpsuit, is a reminder.  _ I was one of them once. And that will never, ever go away. _

She can tell Mac’s agitated too; his stint inside last year wasn’t a walk in the park either, but he doesn’t carry the stain RIley does.  _ He didn’t deserve to be there, and he knew it. He knew it was a cover. But me, I deserved it. I’m guilty as charged. I’m a criminal, and this place is part of me. _

Mac reaches for her hand, and she lets her fingers twist into his, feeling the startling warmth there. “You okay?”

“Maybe.”

“You don’t have to come. You can go back to the car, no one’s going to blame you.”

“No, I do. I need to look Thornton in the eyes, so she knows we’re not broken. I’m not broken.” But the chill in the air and the shouts in the yard are too familiar. 

“Hey, Riley,” Jack says softly, “You’re doing great.” She knows he won’t say more, Jack isn’t the type to go all gushy on her in a prison visiting room, but his eyes say all the things he can’t.  _ I’m proud of you for coming. You made something of yourself, and you should be proud to walk these halls as a free woman. You should show Thornton you’re better than she was, because what got you in a place like this at all was that you chose to protect your family, and she chose to sell them out.  _

Bozer didn’t come, too busy making improvements to Mac’s suit. It’s a convenient excuse; he probably isn’t ready to face the woman whose actions nearly got him killed. She sent Murdoc to the house, his life was turned upside down from that point on and he’s nearly been killed a dozen times because of it. He has every right to not be ready for this yet.  _ Am I? _

Thornton looks as severe as ever when she walks in. Her black hair is shorter than Riley remembers, no longer in a ponytail but hanging roughly chopped around her chin. She’s sporting a new, livid scar on one cheek, and it looks like a fork tine stab to the hand, but there’s the same steely stiffness, the same determined walk.  _ She’s the kind of person everyone knew they should stay on the good side of. One of the top dogs.  _

She sits down, and Mac leans forward. “You said you had information for us. I’d like to hear what it is.”

“What, no ‘hi, good to see you again, Patty’ ?” She says, and Riley remembers how terrifying that cold voice could be. She’s so used to Matty’s brand of scary mom now, that she forgot how intimidating Thornton’s steel side could be.

“You know that’s not why I came.” Riley can see Mac tensing up, all the betrayal and anger and hurt and confusion piling up behind that carefully constructed dam. Red sparks sizzle around his fingertips.

Jack puts a hand on Mac’s arm and pulls his hand off the ledge in front of the window, but it’s too late for that. Thornton’s already seen. 

She smiles. “I wondered when it would happen to you.” 

“You knew? You knew this...how? Why?” Mac’s normally very specific, rational, detailed brain is apparently overloaded. “This...you…”

Thornton turns to Jack. “You didn’t think Chrysalis was just a random code name, did you?” The realization hits Riley like an avalanche.  _ She’s just like him. She’s got powers too. _ Her brain starts flicking through possibilities based on her dark web research.  _ Steel body? Ice creation? Jack called her the Ice Queen a few times...but he wouldn’t have known...right? _ Everything she’s taken for granted about the Phoenix, about her family, is starting to fall apart in her hands, is it possible Jack could be lying to them too? And from the look on Mac’s face, he’s feeling just the same. Then she shakes her head. Jack would never hide something like this. Not when he broke into Matty’s house to uncover the truth about Mac’s father.

Thornton continues calmly. “Twenty years ago, I was the first volunteer for a top-secret project. I was young and idealistic and I still believed in black and white and a good side and an evil one.” 

Jack glares, half-rising from his chair, but Thornton continues. “And what they did turned me into...exactly what they wanted. The perfect spy. A shapeshifter.”

Riley shakes her head.  _ Did NOT see that one coming. And what’s with the sudden helpful streak? I doubt she’s doing this out of any kind of concern for us. What does she want? _

“In my field days, I was DXS’s top infiltrator. I could become anyone, go anywhere.” 

“And here I always thought you were just a good manipulator,” Jack says, anger burning in his words. 

“So why did you turn on them?” Mac asks.  _ Why did you hurt your family? _

“The world would never accept me as I was. To the DXS, I was a tool, just another asset to be used and exploited. If anyone outside the agency learned the truth about me, they’d call me a monster. You can’t tell me you don’t know that now, Mac. All you’ve ever been to DXS, to the Phoenix, is a skill set. Now you’re just a better one.”

“Is that what I was to you, too?”

Thornton sighs, the cold mask slipping just a little. “Never, Mac. I knew what was hiding inside you.” She reaches a hand toward the glass, just a fraction, then pulls away, and the chill is back in her voice. “But I knew that until you changed, you’d never see the truth. You’d never join me. I wanted to wait for you, but then someone made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Someone who saw me as I was and thought it was wonderful. Someone who wanted to change the world, make it a place where people like us could be proud of what we are. And I was going to build that world not for me, but for the next generation. For you.”

“Touching,” Jack snaps. “So you were going to let a madman destroy the world to recreate it?”

“Such a small mind, Jack. Do you know what that virus was you stole? What it did? Thousands of years ago, there were many of us. That virus created heroes, legends, gods. It destroyed the weak, yes, but it made the strong into the unstoppable.”

“And you were going to have it released to make people change again,” Mac whispers. “Is that why…how I...”

“No. You were never exposed to it. After you stopped the virus, stopped the Evolution, we were forced to change our plans. One step at a time.”

“And those steps included hiring a contract killer? If you cared about Mac so much, why did you send Murdoc?” Jack asks, words clipped.

“Oh, his job wasn’t to kill anyone. If it had been, we’d all be dead. His job was to bring Mac to the person who could finish the change, while making the rest of you believe he was dead.” She gives Mac an apologetic shrug. “Unfortunately, it seems he became a bit sidetracked and decided he’d prefer to keep you for himself.” Riley cringes at how casually she says it. 

“If you were such a big part of this Evolution, why did they let you get sent here?” Riley asks. That’s been bothering her for a while.  _ If you have powers, what are you doing staying in a supermax? _

Thornton laughs bitterly. “I suppose they weren’t willing to trust someone who shifted allegiances as easily as she shifts faces.”

“Why didn’t you use your power to escape?” Mac voices Riley’s question.

“Powers come with a price, you I’m sure have already found that out. Shifting is incredibly painful. And as I got older, it got more dangerous. If I shifted again, it might kill me. My body can’t take the strain.”

Jack shakes his head, he obviously doesn’t believe her. “That can’t be the only reason. The Patty I know would take the risk to avoid spending the rest of her life in a supermax.”

“Not if you know who’s waiting for me outside. I failed, and the second I leave this place I’m a dead woman.” Thornton sighs.

“Who is it?”

“I’m risking my neck just talking to you. If I tell you more, he’ll decide I’m a liability even in here.” Thornton leans back. “Time’s almost up, you know. Did you get what you came for?”

“No. I need to know what’s happening to me. Patty, please.” Mac catches her eyes, and she doesn’t look away. “Please, you used to care. If you can help me…”

“Why don’t you talk to the man who created us both? Oversight has the answers you’re looking for.”

“Oversight? He let the DXS experiment on people and approved it?”

“You still know absolutely nothing, don’t you?” Thornton laughs, and the sound is harsh. “Oh, this should be interesting.”

* * *

As soon as they’re in the car, Mac’s calling Matty. He’s shaking, and Riley can see the barely contained panic.  _ Our whole world is collapsing and I’m as lost as he is. _ The virus, the Evolution, Thornton’s powers, the whole idea of this... _ Why can’t I just wake up? Why am I trapped in this insanity? _

“Matty, I need to speak to Oversight.”

Matty’s voice sounds angry and tired. “Mac, I can’t do that. He doesn’t meet directly with agents. Ever.”

“If you can’t get him to come in, I’ll find him myself!” Mac’s starting to glow again, just a little.

“Mac, there are protocols…”

“I’ve been turned into a...a monster, Matty! What are the protocols for  _ this _ ? What are the rules for someone who can blow up a building just because they got angry? Don’t you think maybe this is more important than some damn protocol?” Riley can smell something scorching, and the glow is getting even stronger.

“Mac, please, you have to calm down.”  She reaches for his arm and pulls back gasping, fingers burnt.

Mac looks down at his hands and his eyes widen. He takes a few deep, shuddering breaths and the glow fades slightly. Riley opens the windows a bit and Jack switches on the A/C. The smell of singed cloth is making Riley a bit sick.

Riley can hear Matty sigh on the other end of the phone. “I’ll see what I can do.” Mac hangs up, then throws the phone across the car.

“What the hell just happened?” Jack asks. “Did that just...she…”

“Patty was lying to us about everything. The entire time. And we never knew.” Mac sighs and leans his head back. “The whole time, we were playing her game. And if we hadn’t found out, who knows what she would have done.”

Jack starts the car. “And she wasn’t alone. I’ve very rarely seen Patty scared, but she was scared of whoever this guy who hired her was. I could see it in her eyes.”

“Do you think he’s...like me?” Mac asks quietly.

“A...um...mutant?” Riley ventures, not sure how this is going to go over, but Mac doesn’t complain about the term. “Yeah. If she said he liked her for what she was, and he wanted to release a virus that would have turned thousands of people into them, I think he is.” She can’t get over the fact that that virus, the one they were all so desperate to get when she first met them, would have done that.  _ What would have happened if we hadn’t stopped it?  _ If just Mac having powers has shattered everything she thinks she knows, what would have happened if it had been half the country? Half the world?

* * *

When they return to the Phoenix, Matty’s waiting.

“Did Oversight agree to talk?” Mac asks, and Riley can hear his determination. If Oversight doesn’t come to them, she has the feeling Mac’s going to go track him down, if it takes the rest of his life, to get the answers he needs.

“He’s already on his way.” Matty sighs. “When I told him you’d been to see Thornton, he thought it was time for him to give you the truth.”

“What does that mean, Matty?” Jack asks, and then someone Riley doesn’t recognize, but Mac obviously does, walks through the door.

“Dad?”

  
  



	6. Chapter 6

Riley freezes. _Mac’s DAD? The person he’s been looking for this entire time? Is Oversight?_ Of everything crazy that’s happened in the last month, this should be the least shocking thing, but Riley sits down hard in one of the chairs, feeling like her legs are jello. _He’s been here the entire time and he NEVER said a thing?_

Mac’s face is white; he looks almost worse than when he was sick. _If I’m in shock, it must me a million times worse for him._

“Hello, Angus.” The man’s voice is stiff, almost cold. Not a father meeting his son; this is a superior talking to a junior agent.

“Hello James.” Mac’s voice is equally cold, but Riley can feel the hot anger barely contained underneath it.

“We have a lot of catching up to do, I guess,” Oversight says quietly.

Jack steps up next to Mac. “Yeah. Why don’t you start with the part about how you’re the reason he’s been spontaneously combusting?”

“What are you talking about?” _If he’s trying to play the surprise card, it’s not going to work. We already know Matty told him everything about Sarajevo and after._

Mac takes a deep breath, and a faint shimmer of crimson begins to float around him. “Thornton said it’s because of you that I...changed.”

“Yes and no.”

“That’s not the answer I need!” Mac shouts, and sparks crackle around him.

“My god. That’s amazing,” Oversight...James...is staring at the shimmering, agitated glow. “I’ve seen the security footage, from the war room, but in person…”

Tears flood Mac’s eyes, and his voice begins to shake. “I’m not a lab rat, or a science fair trick! I’m your son, and somehow this is your fault, and I want it gone! It’s not amazing, it’s a curse!” Riley knows she should say something, she should calm him down before something happens, but honestly at this point if she had powers she’d be doing the same thing. “I’m a monster, and I need to know if this can be reversed.”

“I created the drug that did this to you, and it was the worst mistake I’ve ever made. If I could go back I would, but that’s not possible. So it’s up to us to make the best of it now.” James sounds tired, detached, as if this is a conversation he’s had in his head a hundred times.

“Make the best of it? Do you even know what this has done to me? I’ve _killed people_!”

“A terrorist cell. To protect your team.” James shrugs. “You can’t tell me nothing you’ve done before has killed people; it’s what happens in the field.”

“But I used to be able to control what I was doing! And it scared the hell out of me every time I was in the field because I knew one mistake could get people killed. And now it’s not just what I do that’s dangerous, it’s _me._ ”

“So find a way to make it work.” James fixes Mac with a steely glare; it’s the first thing that has made Riley believe these two might possibly be related. She’s seen that look in Mac’s eyes before. “From what I hear from Director Webber, you’ve already managed to get it under control. Your lab tech, Bozer, he’s made a containment device?”

Mac only nods.

“Why don’t you walk us through your little mad scientist experiment, huh?” Jack asks. “Starting with the part where you somehow decided it was a good idea to create people with superpowers? Cause that never goes wrong…”

James looks pleadingly at Mac, as if he hopes to find some support in his son. But Mac’s watching him with the same cold look James had earlier. “I was trying to find a way to cure cancer. To save your mother. And instead, I found a way to activate a dormant gene humans have. It requires a combination of my KX7 serum and radiation to become viable.”

“And you just thought, oh, what the hell, let’s try it and see what happens?” Jack asks angrily. “That’s how every monster story starts, no offense Mac.”

“I’m not the villain of your horror movie, Dalton,” James says. “We were hoping to save lives. To have agents who were stronger, healed faster, made quicker, more accurate decisions in the field. Unfortunately, the results were...unpredictable.” James sighs. “Thornton was the first subject, a very eager volunteer. And when she became a shapeshifter, we had high hopes. If the gene caused shapeshifting, we could only imagine what potential applications it had for covert ops. But then other mutations appeared in other subjects. Telekinesis, telepathy, physical modifications, all sorts of changes, completely random; most of which overpowered their hosts and led to insanity...or death.” He rests a hand on the back of a chair.

“I asked for time to improve the formula. To develop a way to screen candidates for the most mentally and physically sound, people who could withstand the kind of changes they would undergo.”

Mac is shaking with anger by now, and Riley can see the red glow growing. “So, you tested your possibly deadly experiment on _me_?”

“No!” James shakes his head vehemently. “I had already lost your mother. I’d never risk losing you.”

“Then how…”

“My former partner, Jonah Walsh, knew about the experiment and begged to be a part of it. I didn’t dare risk any more human subject tests, not even voluntary ones, until I had a better understanding of what was happening. I told him there was no way it could happen, and he became bitter about it. But he hid that anger from me for over a year. I didn’t know until the night he broke into my house, stole what I had of the KX7, and injected both you and himself with it. He was planning on taking you with him, to spite me, and completing the process to turn you both. I tracked him down, at a facility where he was trying to steal plutonium to finish the transition. I got you back, and I shot him. I thought he was dead. And for your own safety, your memories were modified, by one of our telepaths. I’m sure all you remember of that night is a terrible storm.”

Riley sees a look of shocked horror cross Mac’s face. _Not only has he been lied to and manipulated, he’s been kidnapped by his father’s nemesis, experimented on as revenge, and then had his memories changed._ This is beyond insane.

“Why did you leave?” Mac asks, and there’s so much of the hurt, lonely child in his voice Riley wants to cry.

“To keep you safe. If one person had already attacked my family over the KX7, I couldn’t allow it to happen again. And you’d already accidentally become part of the First Phase. If anyone found out what happened the night Walsh took you, you’d have become government property. I had to distance myself from you as much as I could. So I ended the program and disappeared.”

“You said you thought Walsh was dead. He’s not?”

“Unfortunately, no. When the Phoenix was taken over, he had his men hack the system as well. He downloaded all the notes I had on KX7 and on everything about Project X. Now, I’ve heard from sources that he’s been advertising for volunteers to test his formula on.”

“And you didn’t think this was important for me to know?” Matty asks angrily.

“He hasn’t been able to properly replicate my formula. If he had, the world would know by now.”

“So you were going to wait until the world was at war with superhuman soldiers to tell me what Project X was?” Matty’s cold stare is matching James’s. “When I interrogated you, that was the one piece of information you were the most concerned with hiding. And ever since I became the director here, I kept my distance. I thought you must have your reasons. And then when this happened to Mac, you still lied to me. You told me this was something new. If not for Thornton, I still would know nothing about this.”

“It was for everyone’s safety that the project was sealed. For Angus’s safety.”

“Don’t call me that!” Mac snaps, and Riley sees the red glow forming rings. But he seems to notice it as well, and his hands relax slightly.

Riley desperately wants to reassure him that it’s going to be okay. But how is it ever going to be okay again? His father disappeared and lied to him. And, even if it was an accident, he’s the reason Mac is now living with dangerous, volatile powers, that could even kill him.

“Please, son, you have to understand. Everything I’ve done was to protect you.”

“Well, you did a fantastic job of that,” Jack snarls. “You’ve sat behind a desk watching him almost die over and over and over. And when it all finally came to light, you stayed in the shadows, never giving him the truth, letting him sit in a cell afraid of himself because of something _you_ did.”

“What happened to An...Mac…isn’t my fault. IF you’re going to shoot someone, Dalton, it ought to be Walsh.”

Jack doesn’t flinch. “It ought to be both of you. You, for being stupid enough to create this thing in the first place, and Walsh for what he did with it. And why haven’t you hunted him down yet? If he’s creating a mutant army, don’t you think that’s sort of a priority on the to-do list?”

“Because I can’t track him down.” James glances at them. “He’s hiding his location well. And the only mutant capable of tracking others by their mental signatures died four years ago, in a mental hospital.”

“Maybe I can find him,” Riley says. “You said your contacts told you he’s advertising for potential test subjects, right?”

James nods.

“He’s probably doing it on the dark web. I’ve already been running searches for potential mutant activity. I’ll look pretty legit if I pretend to be interested in signing up as a guinea pig.” She looks at Mac. “I know it won’t change anything, but if we find him, would that be some kind of closure?”

He looks at the floor. “I don’t know. But I guess we could try.”

* * *

Riley leaves the War Room before beginning her search. She claims it’s because she works fastest alone and in quiet. Everyone but James will know she’s lying.

If she stays in that room one more minute, she’s going to punch James in the face. _Wow, I sound like Jack. And how the hell is he not doing exactly that right now?_

There’s a lot to sift through. Far too many sketchy “medical trial” offers Riley really wishes she had the time to investigate, because she knows things like this prey on kids like she used to be; kids who are desperate for money, for something other than the kind of lives they’re trapped in. And many of them don’t come home. She was lucky she’d never gotten into that. But then again, she’d never been kicked out of her house or severely addicted either.

Finally she gets something more promising.

_Looking for physically fit participants 15-35 years old. Military experience preferable but not required. Must be able to pass mental stability screening tests. All involvement with this project must be kept strictly confidential. Only those willing to accept total relocation and complete erasure of all personal record need apply. The next step in evolution is those willing to risk everything for improvement._

Riley clicks the link, but that’s where she hits a dead end. The message popping up tells her that this opportunity is now closed, and to attempt application again in one week.

But there are ways around that kind of thing. If she can hack the system the message came from, maybe she can fool it into thinking she’s actually already part of the subject pool. Hacking this is more difficult that she expected. This Walsh must have a pretty tech-savvy person working with him.

And then something about this starts to feel familiar. Too familiar. She pauses her hack and returns to the War Room. As much as she doesn’t want to see James for the next twenty years, there’s something here all of them need to know.

She throws the code from her laptop onto the wall screen. “This is some of the same encryption I ran into when I was hunting for the Organization.”

Matty looks up with a frown. “Do you think Walsh could be part of it?”

Riley nods. “According to Thornton, someone who knew about the project hired her. Now, I think maybe Walsh could be her contact.”

“It would explain how she knew about me,” Mac says quietly. He glances at James. “Your secret wasn’t as well-kept as you thought. You may had covered up what happened, but Walsh told her everything.”

Riley looks at Mac. He’s shaking, looking everywhere but at James, and she’d be willing to bet that glow hasn’t gone away the entire time she was gone, judging by the temperature in the room. _Everything he took for granted, his entire world, every bit of normal, has been ripped away from him._

“Can you crack it?” James asks, impatiently. Riley glares at him.

“Yes.” She continues to work, and a few minutes later, she’s inside the network. Tracking the IP only takes a few more careful steps. _Okay, their tech guy is not as good as I thought._ The wall screen pings, a map Riley’s just thrown there displaying a red dot with the location of the server. A small, empty area just outside Mexico City.

“Thank you.” Mac starts to walk out the door. “You guys coming?” He looks back at Riley and Jack.

“What are you going to do?” Riley asks.

“We’re going to find Jonah Walsh and make sure he never gets a chance to finish his work.”

 


	7. Chapter 7

Bozer is just as freaked out as Riley expected him to be. When she walks into the lab and tells him Oversight is Mac’s dad, he drops his tools and the suit, stares at her, then collapses into his chair.

“The whole time? He was there? He was watching Mac look for him and he didn’t _say_ anything?” Bozer looks ready to get up, go upstairs, and whack James in the head with the pliers he’s looking at on the desk.

“Yeah. And that’s not all.” Riley decides telling Bozer everything, right now, the fastest she can, is probably the best option. She explains Patty, and the KX7, and Walsh, and James’s disappearance. Bozer looks a little overwhelmed. Probably about the same as Riley’s feeling right now.

She wonders if she’s going to get in trouble for this. Because Bozer wasn’t at the meeting with Patty, he didn’t even know the DXS had been experimenting on people. He probably wasn’t called to the meeting with Oversight because it was considered need-to-know. But at this point, Riley doesn’t care. Keeping secrets from Bozer once almost got him killed. And beyond that, after today, Riley isn’t so sure how she feels about secrets in general.

“How close is that to completion, Bozer?” She asks, looking the suit over.

“A few more hours of fine-tuning and we’re gonna be golden. Why?”

“Because I think you might need to speed it up. We’re going after Walsh to stop him before he replicates KX7 and Mac’s going to need that suit.”

“Got it.” Bozer picks up his tools, but as she walks away Riley can hear him muttering, “He was here the whole time. He was here and he never said a thing.”

 _I need to talk to Mac._ He’s waiting outside. Matty and Jack had left him alone, understanding he was going to need some time to process. James had tried to go after him anyway, but a glare from Matty and Jack firmly grabbing his arm had stopped him.

 _I know he doesn’t feel like seeing anyone right now. But he needs to talk to someone. And at this point, I’m the one who might have a chance of understanding him best._ Her own experiences with father figures haven’t been fantastic. Riley had been furious with Jack when he walked back into her life, admitted he wasn’t a tile salesman, and told her the truth about everything. She still doesn’t totally trust that Elwood is reformed. _I know what it’s like to be lied to, to be walked away from._

She finds Mac almost where she herself ran to, what feels like a lifetime ago, when she thought Mac was dying from the fever. He’s left the path, sitting on the edge of a small creek, tossing sticks into the water. When he looks at her, for just a fraction of a second as she scuffles down the bank toward him, she can tell he’s been crying. His eyes are too bright, and his cheeks are damp.

“Mac, Bozer said the suit will be done in a couple hours, maybe less. I just thought you should know.”

“Is Matty...or-or Oversight...going to have a briefing?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” She sits down beside him. “We already know everything we need to.”

“We don’t know anything.” Mac flings a stick angrily; it catches fire as it leaves his hand and sizzles out in the water.  “Everything I thought I knew about the Phoenix, about my family, has been lies.”

“Not everything. Matty and Jack and Bozer and I are still your family. And we still love you.” Riley hands him a flashdrive. “Matty said to give you this. She told me she’s the one who gave you the watch and the dossier. She wanted you to know the truth, but she couldn’t tell you.”

“Thank you.” Mac slips the drive into his pocket.

“It’s going to be okay. We’re going to get Walsh. And you’re going to be okay. I promise.” Riley hugs him, and he holds her tightly in return. _No matter what I have to do, I’ll make sure of that. I’ll hack anything I have to, burn any bridges I need to, to see if there’s a way to fix this. And even if there isn’t, I’ll be beside you every step of the way._

* * *

The jet has never felt this crowded, not even when their “liberate one protest leader” mission in Somalia turned into “liberate protest leader and his large extended family”. But the presence of Oversight is a very large, and very ominous one.

Riley can’t understand why James is with them. Oversight has never been part of a field mission. And they’re going after his old partner; they stand a much better chance of not getting made on arrival if there’s no one on the team Walsh knows.

But still, he’s here. Maybe he’s hoping this is a father-son bonding experience. Maybe he wants to see Mac’s powers in action; because as much as he claims KX7 was a terrible mistake, James can’t hide the overwhelming curiosity in his face whenever Mac’s powers flare up. _He may say he’s sorry, but I’d bet he’s never seen this power before and he’s actually excited that someone has it. It doesn’t matter that that someone is his son._

Mac’s wearing his containment suit under a beige shirt and brown pants; neon yellow isn’t the best thing to be wearing when trying to sneak into an enemy compound. But they don’t need his powers to go crazy while they’re trying to sneak in either. And Mac seriously struggles to stay in control around his father.

Mac is carefully avoiding looking at James, and he spends most of the flight bending paper clips into all sorts of shapes. Riley sees the shape of a hypodermic needle repeated several times.

She leans over to him and whispers, “Mac, are you gonna talk to him?”

“What’s there to talk about?” Mac asks, glancing at where James is sitting staring out a window. “He created a Captain America super serum, his ex-partner kidnapped me and injected me with it, and now we’re on our way to catch this guy, who was supposed to be dead but isn’t, and is hell-bent on creating an army of superhumans to change the world as we know it.” Riley sighs and nods. And she doesn’t say anything the rest of the flight.

* * *

The compound, when they reach it after “borrowing” a few horses from a nearby ranch, is seriously well-guarded. A perimeter guard catches sight of them, but they’re on horse and he’s on foot. Riley has to admit she’s surprised that James, for his years out of the field, is the one to bring the guy down.

There are even more guards to deal with when they reach the compound’s fences, but with Jack’s skills and Mac’s powers, they’re able to make a fairly quick entrance.

The main buildings are also heavily patrolled. James suggests they enter from the unguarded roof. Mac improvises an ascender rig, and they go up in pairs, Mac and James first, then Riley and Jack. Riley didn’t miss the look on Mac’s face when his father tried to talk him through the whole process. _He’s not a child. Stop treating him like he is!_ She wants to throw James off the roof. Apparently so does Jack.

But they’re here to do a job. Their priority is to stop Walsh from completing KX7.

Inside, the building is almost too quiet. They find a massive lab set up underground. At first glance, it looks like a basic drug operation. But then Mac finds the testing room. Walls covered in bullet holes, blood, and deep gashes that look like bear claws.

“What the hell is this?” Jack asks. “Did he get it to work after all?”

Riley sits down at the desk nearby. “He’s got computers. Maybe he kept a log.”

The video files she finds once she gets past the computer’s security are horrifying. People wearing full hazmat gear inject someone tied down in a chair in that bloodied room with an ominously glowing greenish liquid. The reactions vary widely.

One woman’s eyes glow orange and everything in the room, including the chair, rises into the air and then falls. She begins foaming at the mouth and shaking.

A teenage boy with heavily tattooed arms shrieks so loudly the glass in the camera shatters and the rest of the video is only a haze.

A burly man sits quietly as his handcuffs cover with ice and snap. He barely makes it to the door when he falls, shaking, as his entire body begins to freeze over.

“Oh no,” Riley whispers.

“Well, someone’s been busy.” The voice is rough, almost a snarl. She turns slowly and barely avoids screaming, because the _thing_ behind her, holding a gun to her head, barely looks _human._

James raises his hands slowly. “Hello, Jonah.”

Walsh’s mutation is certainly nothing like Mac’s. Riley’s only seen claws like that in horror movies. His eyes are nearly black, yellowed fangs show above his bottom lip, his beard looks like a bear’s fur, and his hands are massive and paw-like. He looks from Riley to Jack to Mac to James, and then smiles, a horrible jagged-toothed grin.

“Well, well. I never expected to see you again, partner.”

“Neither did I.”

“You left me for dead in the ocean. You know, that really hurt me; I thought we were friends. But it’s thanks to your serum that I survived, so I suppose we’re even.”

He glances back at Mac. “And is this Mini-Mac? All grown up? Tell me, son, did you ever...change?” His smile is all fang. “Or didn’t they ever tell you, you’re like me?”

Mac throws his shoulders back and a bolt of red light slams into Walsh, flinging him back against the wall. “What do you think?”

The man snarls, a primal sound that sends shivers down Riley’s spine. His chest is singed, shirt scorched and skin reddened. But as Riley watches, the burns fade and Walsh’s skin returns to normal.

Mac blasts him again, his own shirt tearing back to reveal the blue and yellow uniform underneath. This time, he holds the energy longer, and Walsh’s skin chars, filling the room with a horrifying burnt smell. But he stands up again, grinning bloodily at Mac.

“Oh shit,” Jack says softly. _He’s just not dying!_

Walsh leaps for Riley, and Jack jumps in front of her and fires, but the bullet doesn’t seem to affect the man at all. Walsh bats him aside, then takes a swing at James, who dodges him. Riley grabs Jack’s arm as he stands, clutching a bleeding arm.

“Jack!”

“I’m okay!” He levels the gun at Walsh, who’s now grappling with both James and Mac. As they watch, James is flung across the room into a pillar. He groans, struggling to his feet, and Mac pulls away from Walsh to get James on his feet and moving.

“Get out! I’m going to find a way to stop him!” Mac shouts, shoving them toward the door. Then he’s yanked backward, and Riley hears his sharp yelp of pain.

“We can’t leave him here!” Riley snaps when James tries to pull them to the stairs. “He’s gonna get himself killed if we don’t do something.”

“He’s doing what he has to to stop Walsh,” James says a bit too sharply. Riley wonders if there’s some genuine fear in his voice. _But it doesn’t matter because he’s still going to leave his son to die._

“There’s nothing we can do for him, Riles.” Jack’s voice is pained but resigned, and Riley knows he’s right. They were getting thrown around in there like they were nothing to that creature. “Mac’s the only one who can stop him.” _Damn it, he’s right._ And so she runs.

Jack takes down every guard in their way with a cold precision Riley can tell is a mixture of anger and grief. They barely make it our the doors when she hears a reverberating howl from below, an animalistic cry of rage and pain. And the worst part is she has no idea if it came from Walsh or Mac.

There’s a massive, loud explosion that knocks them all off their feet, and the building crumbles to the ground.

“Mac!” Riley screams. She rushes back toward the still-collapsing structure, only to be stopped by Jack grabbing the straps of her backpack.

“Riles, it’s too dangerous! You can’t do anything!” Jack shouts, but his voice is breaking and choked with tears. Riley collapses in a boneless heap on the ground, tears carving through the dust settling on her cheeks. _Please don’t let this be it. If he died trying to save our lives, how am I supposed to live with that?_ Mac’s always the smart one, always the one who can think of a way out. _Please, please, have had a plan for this. One where you lived._

There’s another small crash as more of the building crumbles, followed by...a whimper? Riley starts to stand, only to freeze. _What if it’s Walsh who survived the place falling, and not Mac? Maybe even that couldn’t kill him._

Someone’s stumbling to their feet, someone with messy hair that’s covered in dust, and a dirt and blood smeared, colorful uniform. _Mac._ Riley gets up and starts to run to him, but Jack beats her there, reaching for Mac’s hand to help him out of the smoking hole the house has become.

“That was...interesting.” Mac gasps, then coughs.

“Now are you gonna listen to me the next time I tell you not to blow yourself up?” Jack grabs Mac’s shoulder because really, he looks like he’s about to fall. Riley’s not far behind.

She cringes when she sees his uniform. “Mac, you’re all bloody.”

“It’s not all mine.”

Jack sighs. “Enough of it is, bud.” And then Mac collapses against Jack, shuddering, blood seeping from deep claw gashes across his stomach and shoulder. “Come on, let’s get you home.”

* * *

Riley holds Mac’s hand while medical finishes stitching him up. They’ve tried giving him painkillers, but it appears that his body just burns right through them.

He’s been lucky. Or more accurately, he’s lucky he has Bozer around. Boze’s heavily layered suit design kept Walsh’s claws from tearing right through Mac’s stomach and gutting him. He’ll have some fairly vivid scars to show for this one, but he won’t even need to stay overnight, which is a good thing.

Mac’s been on edge since they left Mexico. When James tried to help patch him up on the flight back, Mac kept cringing away from him, until the man gave up and left the work to Riley and Jack.

When his injuries have been cleaned and bandaged, Mac pulls on a clean shirt, wincing, and gets up. “I need to go talk to James.” Riley nods.

“Do you want me to come?”

“Please.” He continues to grip her hand. With her free one she texts Jack. _Mac talking to dad. Could use you._

Jack’s waiting at the War Room door when they get there. “Whoa, man, are you sure you’re up for this? You kinda look like death warmed over.”

“I have to do it now before the rest of these painkillers wear off and I start thinking straight again,” Mac says with a halfhearted smile. Jack laughs, but it’s forced. _What’s going to happen?_

When they walk in, James is waiting for them. Mac straightens up as much as he can and lets go of Riley’s hand. “I’d like to give you my official resignation. Director Webber says only Oversight can accept it.”

“Well, I don’t!” James snaps. “You’re too valuable an asset, Angus. I can’t let you leave, not like this. Give it some time. You’re in no fit state of mind to…”

“Don’t tell me what I’m fit to do!” Mac snaps, then takes a deep breath. “It won’t make a difference if you give me ten days or ten weeks. I can’t work with someone I don’t trust.” He turns to the door. “I’m done here.”

James sputters something, but Mac turns on his heel, ignoring the man, and walks out the door.

From the first day she met him, Mac has made Riley believe in the possibility of real heroes. Nothing’s changed, not really. Mac’s always been a hero; now he just has superpowers. _And wow, that’s definitely not a sentence I ever thought would go through my head._

“We’re coming with you.” Riley doesn’t know what will happen if they let Mac leave on his own. So she won’t let it happen. Mac takes her hand. Jack puts an arm around his shoulder.

“Yeah, who needs all the fancy tech and stuff anyway, huh? We can do what we do our way, we don’t need an agency behind us.”

Matty’s waiting outside. “I wish you’d reconsider, Mac, but I understand.” He bends down to hug her, wincing. She holds him tight. “Don’t hesitate to ask me if there’s anything I can do,” Matty says softly. “And send me a postcard once in a while. If I get tired of office politics and decide to run away from my responsibilities, I need to know where I should run off to, you know.”

Mac stands up, and Riley sees Bozer coming upstairs, holding a box of things he had carried to his lab. _Matty must have texted him to tell him what happened._ Together, the four of them walk out the doors.

Riley doesn’t know where they’re going. But they have each other, so they’ll be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll have a short epilogue after this, and then this story will (sadly) be concluded. But I'm planning on writing more in this AU once I finish some of my other WIPs so stay tuned ;)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the final chapter for this story, but rest assured I have a sequel in planning already, and it will be written as soon as I finish a few current WIPs ;) I really love this universe and this story has been so much fun. Thank you to everyone who's read, left kudos, and reviewed, and to my awesome beta KatieComma!

Like most things that seem too good to be true, being able to walk away from the Phoenix is. Their attempt at a dramatic exit is cut short by James flinging open the War Room door, and calling after them that if they walk out of the building he can have them all arrested for theft of government property. Riley feels her stomach sinking at the implication. _Please don’t let this go the way I think it will._

None of them want to go back there, but they can’t just ignore this. So they walk back inside, back to the War Room, to see Matty looking angry and heartsick, and James looking smugly triumphant.

“You _can’t_ resign, Angus. Because the full mutation took place, you’re technically a Project X subject and as such, you belong to the Phoenix Foundation. I can detain you by any means necessary. I’m sorry to have to do this, but you leave me no choice.”

Riley wants to throw up. _He’s blackmailing his own son by telling him he’s nothing more than government property?_ Mac shudders, looking down at his hands, eyes wide and frightened, fingers glowing. _What will they do to him if Oversight makes good on that threat?_

And then Jack steps up and his right hook sends Oversight stumbling backward, clutching his jaw.

“Listen to me,” Jack growls, and his voice is cold and dangerous. “We are walking out of this building, _right now, all of us._ And if you talk about Mac that way again, or if you send anyone after us to get him back, I will find you, and I will end you. There is nowhere on earth you’re going to be able to hide from me if you hurt him.”

“You have no right to speak to me like this,” James snaps.

“Yes, he does,” Matty cuts in. “You shut down Project X and buried it. As far as the Phoenix is concerned, it doesn’t exist. None of us are under any obligation to honor any requests connected to it. Unless, of course, you want to reopen the project and show the world what you did in the name of science.” Riley can’t tell if she’s bluffing or not. If she is, it’s a huge risk.

But it pays off. James nods, slowly, frustration and anger replacing that smug stare.

Jack turns back to the others, his fury already slipping away. He smiles and puts one arm around Riley’s shoulders and one around Mac’s. “Let’s get outta here. Second time’s a charm, right?”

“Pretty sure that’s third time, Jack,” Mac corrects, but Riley can see the deep relief in his eyes. _Maybe his own blood family turned out pretty awful, but he’s always got us._

* * *

The Texas ranch that’s been in Jack’s family for five generations is the perfect place to start over. There’s plenty of open space for Mac to work on controlling his powers, and over time, he starts to improve. He likes helping Jack and his cousins, who have taken over most of the cattle business in Jack’s absence, and Riley often finds him in the barn, grooming one of the horses or taking care of a litter of orphan kittens. Being there seems to help Mac stay calmer. He’s hoping to be able to get his powers under control without constantly needing Bozer’s suit.

So far, there have been a few near misses, and Mac almost burnt the barn down once, but Jack assured him he’d done worse to the place himself as a teenager, and then spent the rest of the afternoon trying to take Mac’s mind off the incident by telling embarrassing stories from his childhood on the ranch.

True to his word, Mac sends Matty a postcard, and the letter that comes back, to all of them, is kind and caring and sweet. Matty misses them, a lot. She knows why they won’t be coming back, but she promises to come see them soon.

When she does, she has a black eye and bruises on her cheek, and she tells Jack it’s his fake ex-wife’s fault. Apparently Dawn from New Orleans found a mole in the CIA, and when Matty investigated, it turned out that her contact _was_ the mole. Mac can’t help but laugh when Matty tells him she got away from the guy by burning him with the car’s cigarette lighter.

“I learned from the best,” She tells him. “Someone’s got to start improvising with you gone.”

“Never thought it would be you, Matty,” Jack laughs.

“I might surprise you, Dalton,” She tells him with a smile.

She can’t stay long, but before she leaves, she tells them she’s working on a solution, something to get them out from Oversight’s thumb if they want to come back to Phoenix. Mac thanks her, but Riley can see he’s not planning on taking her up on that offer.

Riley didn’t know how much she’s missed Matty until she leaves. It felt so normal and right to have her there, eating together, talking about work, playing Truth or Dare until Jack insists they can’t possibly have any more bottles of hot sauce in the house.

Part of her wants them to go back, wants life to go back to normal, but then she sees Mac fixing the windmill behind the house, or calming down a spooked horse, or just sitting on the porch while Jack plays guitar badly and sings even worse, and she wouldn’t change this for the world. He’s happy here, content and at home. And if he never has to think his miserable excuse for a father again, it’ll be too soon. She would never in a million years want him to have to go back to being controlled and manipulated by that man.

Riley’s never been much of a country girl; she’s always enjoyed the lively energy of the city. But the ranch is starting to grow on her. Jack finds her a horse that suits her, a gentle one who won’t make more mischief than trying to eat her shirts, and they ride together often, checking on the cattle and fences. Jack’s hoping they might be able to make this place a working ranch again; it’s been supporting the tenant farmers who’ve been taking care of it, but he remembers days when hundreds of cattle roamed the hills.

Bozer is more like Riley. He’s not fond of the dust and grit that blows into the windows and gets in everyone’s clothes and mouths. The first snake he saw sent him running and yelling for Jack to shoot it. Even so, Riley notices that he’s nearly always humming Jack’s old country guitar songs while he cooks now, and that he and Mac have taken over the small machine shed to try and repair an ancient blue Dodge pickup that’s been rusting behind the barn for years. They’re optimistic about it, even though it doesn’t even have an engine yet and Riley thinks it looks more like it belongs at the local junkyard.

Riley can’t exactly pinpoint when it happens, but one morning she wakes up to the breeze blowing in, and the horses neighing for food, and Bozer frying bacon downstairs, and Mac promising Jack he actually _will_ get around to fixing the manure spreader today, and she feels _home._

The first time she calls it home to Jack, he says the place has a way of doing that to you. He tells her if she feels like it’s home, it’s time to show her the place that always made _him_ feel that way. He takes her fishing, to his favorite hidden spot on the river behind the ranch, and they sit in silence and watch the flies skim over the water and argue about who's going to bring home the bigger fish. In the end, Riley wins that competition.  

* * *

She should have known it was too good to last. While they're sitting around the table, and Bozer is frying up the last of their catch, Mac gets a call from Matty on the burner phone she left with them. Thornton’s shifted and escaped the supermax.

_We did exactly what she wanted us to. Took down the one person she was afraid of. She played all of us, and she used Mac._

Thornton can disappear, become anyone she wants. The chances of finding her again are slim. But if they ever do, Riley knows there will be no mercy this time.

Riley doesn’t know what the woman’s plans might be; if she’s going to try to contact Mac, if she believed as much as Walsh did that the world should be forced to accept people like them by any means possible.

“We have to find her,” Mac says quietly, and Riley can see the sparks flickering around his hands. She nods, and Jack grins.

“Let's do it,” Jack says, and Riley pulls out her laptop and starts typing. _It feels better than I’ll admit to be back in the game._ They’re going to save the world again, but this time, they’ll do it their way.


End file.
